Dave Weatherwax / Jackson Citizen PatriotFirefighters battle a fire Monday in the attic of a home at 9490 Greenwood Road in Grass Lake Township.

Fire has damaged or destroyed more than a dozen houses and killed five people in Jackson County this year.

The latest fire, about 10 a.m. Monday, started in the second story of a farmhouse at 9490 Greenwood Road in Grass Lake Township.

"There have been quite a few fires since January," said Parma-Sandstone Fire Chief Jim Hesselgrave, whose department has fought four fires this year, including one that leveled a home on Springport Road early this month.

"It's strange this time of the year we've had four already. Last year, I don't think we had five all year," he said.

Firefighters have responded to more than 29 fires in Jackson County this year, many of them home-heating related. The number is larger than usual, said Michigan State Police Detective Sgt. Ken Hersha, fire investigator and commander of the fire investigation team.

"The extended cold season is taking its toll on marginal heating systems," Hersha said.

One man died this year in a fire caused by a wood-burning stove. Three died in an electrical fire last week, and an 81-year-old Napoleon Township man died in January after he was burned in a November fire.

Monday, the fire on Greenwood Road seemed most intense near the pipe for a wood-burning stove at the rear of the house.

Smoke billowed from an attic window and seeped from the eaves and peak of the wood-frame house.

The Jackson County Fire Investigation Team was at the scene for several hours, but had not determined a cause as of Monday evening, said Grass Lake Township Fire Chief Greg Jones.

The house's occupants, Alfred and Nancy Martini, safely escaped the fire and are to stay with their daughter and son-in-law, who live next door, Jones said.

He said the house likely is fixable, but not immediately inhabitable as it sustained "extensive" damage to its second story.

The cost of the damages had not yet been figured, he said Monday.

Jones' department also assisted Friday at a Napoleon fire that killed a mother and her two small children. A faulty electrical cord was blamed in the trailer fire at Napoleon Countryside Estates. Investigators said batteries were missing from two smoke detectors.

Services for Tammy L. Crabtree, 39, and her two youngest children, Dakota, 3, and Kaleb, 23 months, are Wednesday at the Brown-Van Hemert Funeral Home in Addison.

It was the second fatal fire this year in Napoleon Township. Lloyd Gauss, who built the Green Valley Golf Course, died Jan. 17 in his home on the property.

"We've been hit exceptionally with fatals," said Napoleon Township Fire Chief Jay Hawley. He said he's headed the department for 34 years, and until this year he'd fought one fatal fire, a house explosion caused by a natural-gas buildup, which killed two in February 1996 in Napoleon.

This year, five people have died in or after fires in Napoleon Township.

Richard Thomas, 81, died Jan. 6 after a Nov. 28 fire stemming from a cigarette wrecked his home at 691 Dollar Lake Drive.

A neighbor helped him out of the house and he spent more than a month at the
University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor before he was moved to a critical-care facility in Jackson, where he never fully recuperated.

"I am sort of discouraged by all these fatals," Hawley said.

Each of the fires have been different, but all were accidental and preventable, Hawley said. "I can't blame it on any one thing."

Gauss, 84, had started a fire in his wood-burning stove early that morning. The fire somehow spread from the stove, causing Gauss to succumb from smoke inhalation as he tried to exit, a fire marshal said.

Total numbers of structure fires in Jackson County this year were not available Monday, but the Jackson Fire Department, which automatically goes to fires in the city and the county's largest townships  Leoni, Summit and Blackman  has responded to 22 structure fires since January.

Last year, they responded to 32 fires.

Most of the house fires were caused by wood-burning stoves and malfunctioning electrical units. Hesselgrave, the Parma-Sandstone chief, said people are increasingly burning wood in order to save money as the state struggles economically.

There were three major house fires the first week of March, including one that leveled the Tompkins Township home of Jackson County Sheriff's Deputy Tony McNeil on March 7.

The fire spread from a wood-burning stove and consumed the interior of the two-story farmhouse. The family dog was lost, but the McNeils and their five children were away that evening.

Four days earlier, a blaze blamed on an ill-kept chimney left nothing of a house on Springport Road in Sandstone Township and its occupants, Sharon Kaiser and her two teenage daughters, lamenting their losses.

Using common sense is key, Hawley said. People can get careless, but they should regularly clean out their chimneys, change the batteries in their smoke detectors and do what they can to prevent catastrophe.

"Most people don't have a fire and most people don't think they'll have a fire," he said. "I can't caution people enough that they have to play by the rules."